How about a little psychedelic Guitar Rock? Silly title but I like it! Something a little different from me. I'm playing nothing - it's all BIAB real tracks, loops and effects. All the guitar effects are from BIAB plug-ins. No outside effects were imported. I started this last summer (2017) and finished it while Di was getting an MRI this past Friday (Feb 2, 2018) - finished it in the Dr's waiting room on my laptop. I put it into Audacity a couple of hours ago and here it is. And Brent Mason really came through for me! I'll have to pay him more next time.

I trimmed the highs on the drums and loops as much as I could without losing their dynamics. The ending could use a little more work.

Wow - this is unreal! It reminds me of certain psychedelic rock groups from the late 60's and early 70's. I love the rhythm here too. It fits perfectly with the swarm of distorted guitars. It has a ton of power behind, and the groove is fantastic. It isn't too often you hear something this different sounding created in Band-in-a-Box.

It sounds like a superb backing track. It doesn't really have a melody you can latch on to but it's got a great feel and vibe anyway. I really enjoyed this.

Peace,

Ian

Hi Ian,

Thanks so much for those very kind words. And yeah - the melody is pretty much "loose". But, the chord pattern is consistent throughout. I know that "mellow" is a very unlikely description for this, but that's the feeling I got as I listened after I recorded it - "aggressive mellowness", maybe?! Thanks again.

Wow - this is unreal! It reminds me of certain psychedelic rock groups from the late 60's and early 70's. I love the rhythm here too. It fits perfectly with the swarm of distorted guitars. It has a ton of power behind, and the groove is fantastic. It isn't too often you hear something this different sounding created in Band-in-a-Box.

Great work, and thanks so much for sharing

Deryk,

Thanks so much! I'm more than delighted you liked this. I don't think I've heard a similar BIAB song, either. Mixing this was a real challenge as it's a bit busy. But i guess it came out okay for the most part.

I was curious what your thoughts would be. I'm thrilled with your review! I really worked hard on the mix with this one. As I mentioned to Deryk, it's a little busy and it was no easy task keeping everything in, more or less, in it's place. i do wish I'd accented the drum fills a little more than I did.

It was a real trick to get the congas placed in the mix as just a small bit of adjustment either way (louder or softer) and they either nearly disappeared or almost took over.

Nice piece of work here indeed. I lived through (survived?) that era but I wouldn't have a clue as to how to put this together...even having seen many of the classic psychedelic groups live and listened to a fair amount of the music.

This is very interesting piece, very unique and original sounding atmosphere. Good be a nice one for a chase scene in a movie, even the guitar sounds bit like a fast driving car Great mix and arrangement.

Summary of Changes for Build 5Added: When generating the input file for saving as an MGU/SGU SongMode128= is saved to the input file.Added: Localization support for 2018.Added: flyby hints to new dialogs.Fixed: Save As with a filename greater than 128 chars could cause an error 123 plus access violation.Fixed: Rebooting RealBand after a filename with 128 chars was saved could cause an access violation.Fixed: Pressing the Change button in the Event List Window could result in an access violation if an event was not a Note event.Fixed: When running in Win 10, and using BBW or PT to generate audio harmonies, an error would occur saying that you need BB 2011 or PT 12 to generate audio harmonies.Fixed: Midi Thru Method was not being saved to the .INI file. It always reverting to Track-Specific when booting up RealBand, even if the user manually changed the setting to Global in the Midi Thru Settings dialog.Fixed: Delete All Notes on This Peg menu item in notation window right-click menu was missing.Fixed: Potential crash on exit (having to do with the DLL attempting to free up a dynamic array that was passed to it).

Summary of changes for Build 512 since 510 (Feb 15 2018):Fixed: "Load SoundTrack Song" and "Load song with RealDrums Audio" buttons in the Sound Track dialog were not working.Fixed: After returning Band-in-a-Box to factory settings the File Open dialog would default to the bb\Data\Lib directory.Fixed: Choosing a custom chord sheet font would ignore any color choice made in the font selection dialog.Fixed: Drum names were sometimes truncated in the RealDrums MultiDrums and Quicklist dialogs.Fixed: Exporting a MIDI file might cause the error, "MIDIConv.exe no found".Fixed: Mixer changes were not undoable, and would not cause user to be prompted to save their song when exiting.Fixed: Static in RT2438 and other various RealTracks fixes.Fixed: StylePicker database various updates. Some styles were displaying the wrong feel (swing/even) in notation. A few styles incorrectly showed missing Drums.Fixed: The audio latency setting would increase every time leaving the Windows Audio Devices dialog.Fixed: The Download Manager folder name defaulted to 2016 instead of 2018.Updated: Help file.

Windows Audio (WASAPI) driver support. This allows for low latency audio recording/playback without requiring ASIO. Note that this supports 1 stereo input plus 1 stereo output at a time. For multiple inputs/outputs, you should continue to use either MME or ASIO.

ABC Notation format support. You can save a track of notation in a popular ASCII text format to import into other programs, or you can paste this format into a user forum as a way of sending the track (usually the melody and chord symbols) to other users without having to attach a file.

The built-in Audio Chord Wizard detection in the Chords window automatically detects the chords of the song, based on the audio data from all non-muted audio tracks. This works similar to the standalone Audio Chord Wizard, except that it uses the current bar lines of the existing song.

Notation Enhancements:
-X/8 time signature support. This is a special method of displaying 6/8, 9/8, or 12/8 time signatures in the Notation window.
-The Duplicate previous chord in notation right-click menu lets you quickly duplicate the previous chord (group of notes on same peg) without having to reenter it.
-Delete highlighted notes in notation right-click menu lets you delete all highlighted notes.
-Delete all notes on this peg in notation right-click menu lets you delete all notes on the nearest peg that was clicked on.
-You can now enter Section Numbers. Previously, you could enter letters (A-Z) only, but now you can also enter numbers (1-9).

We released the much-loved Xtra Styles PAKs in August 2016! This release included 164 RealStyles for Jazz, Country, Rock-Pop, and Singer/Songwriter and worked with any Band-in-a-Box® 2016 or higher UltraPlusPAK, EverythingPAK, or Audiophile Edition!

Xtra Styles PAKs were such a hit... we couldn't stop making them! Since their introduction, we've released 3 more PAKs with a total of over 600 Xtra Styles in all!

Check out some great feedback we've received on our Facebook account from program users:

"I have been using Band-in-a-Box for years. It is the anchor of my music gigs as well as my fun in my studio. I have used other software but Band-in-a-Box is my main go to."
-Jack T.

"Love Band-in-a-Box. As someone who played professionally for 20 years and retired from live performing years ago, I still love music. Band-in-a-Box allows me to create fun arrangements which I can sing over or play over. There are THOUSANDS of different variations plus you can enter any chords you like and create any chart. It's also great for creating background tracks for videos and audio content for websites, training etc. And like everything else in the world . . . it may not be right for everyone. For those who love music and don't have the time to shed five or six instruments it's way cool."
-Vinnie R.

"This program has completely changed my playing for the good. I can experiment with playing chords and leads over various scenarios that I can quickly create and change. Love this program. I use it nearly every day."
-Dave R.

"I bought my first version in 1994 and have progressed to 2018 version. I use it to create backing tracks for live music performance. I currently have over 2,000 songs performance ready. If you can and type, and use mouse it will work for you."
-Roger M.

"The premiere reason for me for buying this program; it has given me the freedom to fully complete the foundation for my songs without the confinement of limited minded musicians. After the song concept is complete, it can then be presented those musicians to play as a cover song. Also writing a song with a band gives them partial ownership of your idea... not cool... especially since they may have fought your idea every step of the way.. Every member of an organized band should own a copy of this program to compose or to even give legitimate composition alternatives to the original songwriter."
-Paul V.

ABC notation is the simple text-based notation system used by musicians worldwide to store chords, melody, and lyrics of songs. Now with Band-in-a-Box® 2018 for Windows you can open and save songs in ABC notation format!

To save the song in ABC notation format, press the [Save As] toolbar button and choose Save as ABC notation file from the menu. Once opened, select a track that you want to save and choose your other criteria - The [Copy to clipboard] button will copy the file to the clipboard (that you can then paste it into other programs). The [Save as File] button will let you type a name and select the destination in your hard drive.